Kevin Durant called Paige Bueckers “an all-around monster” when she and the UConn Huskies beat South Carolina to win the 2025 NCAA women’s basketball national championship.
Bueckers continues to live up to Durant’s compliment.
The Dallas Wings selected Bueckers with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, and while the Wings finished with a league-worst 10-34 record, Bueckers won Rookie of the Year and earned All-Star and All-WNBA honors.
Bueckers looked even better in the Wings’ 2026 season opener and paid homage to Durant in the process.
The Wings visited the Indiana Fever at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Saturday afternoon. Bueckers put on a clinic as the most efficient player on the floor — scoring 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting from the floor, adding four assists and three rebounds. Bueckers’ +8 plus-minus rating was the best of any player in the game. Dallas won 107-104.
Bueckers let the Fever know about it, too.
Bueckers bodied Sophie Cunningham on the way to the hoop, laying in an easy two, and hit Cunningham with the “too small” hand gesture afterward:
After hitting a fadeaway jumper, Bueckers turned around and hit the Fever bench with “too small”:
Durant cosigned Bueckers’ performance and her choice of taunt by posting a photo of it to his Instagram Story:
For those unaware, Durant popularized pinching his fingers together to signal “too small” to opponents for years, as ESPN reported in November 2023.
Wins were difficult to come by in Dallas last season, so Bueckers was more focused on leaving Indiana with the Wings’ first win of the season.
“We’re all humble enough to know how hard it is to get wins in this league,” Bueckers said at her postgame presser. “I mean, I’m not one to live in the past, but I’m not even sure how long it was until we got our first win last year. It’s not to say, like, get complacent, or, ‘Oh, we got one win; we’re gonna go 44-0.’ We’re so focused on winning the day, winning the practice, and getting better every single day.”